


throw a stone to a riddle

by fated_addiction



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 12:44:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose Tyler keeps a few anniversaries close.</p>
            </blockquote>





	throw a stone to a riddle

**Author's Note:**

> Idk what this is. What I do know that this is for [somethingofthewolf](somethingofthewolf.tumblr.com). Melissa, you're perfect.

It’s six stars to the left (honestly, maybe it’s the bloody _right_ ) and a few, wide, wide and impossible galaxies that walk Rose Tyler back into another timeline, blank as ever, and with the same, ol’ terrible chips shop from down the road.

Which is closed. Of course.

“Ugh,” she mutters. Shaky hands curl in her hand. “Bloody _hell_ ,” she says, and her nose wrinkles. Her jumper cinches into her hips.

The calculations unravel in her head though. There is a missing spot. There is always the missing spot. Sometimes, if she wanted to be cruel she could go and separate what is her timeline and what isn’t, and those come in multiples, thirds, fourths, and sixths. It’s the rampant patterns of her brain, which have been nothing but a small and a bit of her own since she walked into the TARDIS years and years and years ago.

What was she doing here – oh yes, yes and yes. She stares at the closed chip shop. The sign is beat and down. The dust crinkles into the window, the glass and there are still papers that are skewed over the front to tables. She sees the light in the back, into the kitchen it goes, and she wonders if it’s still Fred or Fredd- _ie_ , proper or not in this timeline as well.

Her ears are ringing. Behind her, a horn goes off in the distance. The neighborhood’s a roundabout and she looks down at her watch. Jackie’s due, in whatever this is, back home from work.

There’s a sigh too.

“Well, it could be worse. They could have brilliant chips.”

Rose freezes.

 

 

-

 

 

You have to understand –

actually, there isn’t much that you _have_ to understand since Rose has always, firmly and irrevocably believed in choices, in a lot of choices, and just because they’ve become stranger and fewer over the years (and timelines, that’s key right there, and really, no one loves a liar!) doesn’t mean that she’s gone and let that go

\- that she expects him, she expects a lot from him, dead and alive and here and there because that’s what he still does, him or not him or not him and _really_ him, to show up, but never for her. It was Mickey who gave it best: _you cannot hold onto that anger forever, Rosie_.

She stares at the Doctor in the window.

“Well. ‘lo.”

He’s grinning, and it’s less than strange. His head tilts.

“It’s still you,” he says simply.

She shrugs. “At least, there’s a bit of consistency going about.”

It sobers the Doctor quickly. A pang of regret pulls into her throat. She shoves her fingers into the sleeves of her jumper. There’s a bit of a hole coming about too, caught just under her palm. She doesn’t have the heart to change and mend it. She’s never worn his jumper before.

Not him, she corrects. Her eyes still wander over the overcoat and then sturning back, leaning into the glass.

“You’re not you,” the Doctor murmurs, eyeing her.

“No,” she says. Her lips purse. “You already mentioned that.”

“Except I didn’t,” he says, and then oh, _oh_ , it’s slow and unsettling, and it’s here, there, and the aftermath. Rose feels her mouth dry and tighten and her head’s rather heavy, shuffling over the glass. The color of his eyes change, darker and it sort of settles into what exactly she’s walked into.

“You did Christmas already.”

“I did,” he moves and leans against the glass with her. His head turns and they are staring at each other. “You’re a bit too lovely in the snow fall, Rose Tyler.”

Her mouth feels absent. Then there’s a smile. A sharper memory, at best.

“Does he know?”

“Mmm?” and his fingers are at her elbow, over the juncture of her arm and then the curve of her shoulder. Rose escapes with a tiny sigh. “Stop,” she says, and meets his gaze, shaking her head. “I didn’t come to see you.”

“But you’re here,” he says.

“Doctor,” she chides, her teeth in her lip. “ _Honestly_.”

He shrugs.

They’re quiet. There are things to say. There are always things to say. She wonders. She goes back and forth with wondering. She’s walked into this before. She thinks about her tiny flat and a bit 

“Six stars,” she murmurs. 

“What?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing,” she says. “It’s nothing – I reckon this is the part where I tell you that I’m very, very angry with you. Or not so much. You make me tired. Suppose that’s a bit of the same thing, yeah?”

“Well, I can’t speak –”

Rose’s mouth opens. It closes. Then she laughs – slow, shuddering. A fist presses into her mouth and she closes her eyes too. She feels amusement. That silly, strange amusement that unravels when she remembers him. It hits her in tufts of air too. Her lips purse and open. It’s soundless and then it’s not, a low pulse curling in her throat as she shakes her head.

“He knows I’m here, Doctor,” she tells him.

This is an anniversary.

 

 

– _you smell like you_ , he doesn’t say and if he said this, it would be multiple versions of multiple selves and she knows, knows that he will never forgive himself for the last three lot of them (or four, it’s now a whole four) and it goes a little like Rose, Martha, Donna, and the lovely Pond, too connected and too bright and brilliant and full in love with eyes wide open and the life they can never get back.

The difference is simple, Rose thinks.

(and here, it’s maps and coordinates, her fingers counting his freckles, remembering for the next time because it’s the Doctor and there never fails to be a next time, his mouth to hers and babes, always the babes, as his lips are wet and sticky and the right bastard went and had chips before _her_ -)

“You can’t go where I go,” she tells him, and carefully, maybe too carefully.

He laughs and swallows against her mouth. His skin is warm. Her hands slip between the folds of his coat.

“It would be rather frightening if I followed,” he says. This is the truth of the matter. It’s slight and his fingers curl against the back of her neck, then right through the strands of her hair. “You know?” he adds.

She thinks of Jackie then, her family, and the stones and sand in her boots, a bit like an exodus and an old friend. It’s how she lets herself kiss him again (and again, and again, and _again_ for all six stars and another right turn), mouth pursed, pulsed, and licking away, back into his sigh for a bit more of his chips as if it were the most basic instinct, roundabout and clutched tightly to her heart.

They loved each other the hardest, after all. 

You wish this was about letting go.

 

 

-

 

 

It’s after seven when her finger and her thumb dig into her scalp, through the length of her hair and right into a fistful of strands. She plaits them carefully and into the bathroom, Rose Tyler goes, in her tiny little flat.

By the sink, there is a small plate and a ring. 

“Out of your system then?”

She stops. There is no hair tie around her wrist. 

A sleepy voice breaks through again though. He appears at the doorframe, a pair of pajama bottoms and his arms crossed into his chest. Her gaze meets his in the mirror, her eyes crossing over the beard and the gathering at his throat.

There’s still a lump in hers. Him, not him.

“Reckon so,” she says.

He pushes away from the door. His hand curls into her hip. Over the jumper, over his jumper and his mouth presses into her palm. She feels him exhale.

“You smell like chips,” he says.


End file.
